Before the era of the World Wide Web, intelligence agencies had to rely on their own flunkies to gather all meteorological information they could find about a particular weather system; this explains why so many Axis spies were found with weather data among their possessions.
The FBIS – short for Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service – is the organization that listens to the world’s radios for Uncle Sam. It’s monitoring station in Washington has, besides editors and annalists, some sixty fantastic linguists on its staff – people who are fluent at anywhere from three or four – up to a couple of dozen, languages apiece. Their job is to intercept and translate the shortwave broadcasts of Rome, Berlin, Vichy and a score of lesser stations, which daily pour out Axis propaganda in more languages than were ever spoken in the Tower of babel.
The FBI had been tangling Axis spies throughout the mid-to-late Thirties, but with the December 8, 1941, declaration of war the FBI was emboldened with far greater powers. This explains why Director Hoover exclaimed that his agency had just completed the busiest year in its history.
When the twenty-year-old editor at Yank Magazine wrote this editorial at the close of W.W. II he was expressing a belief that was shared equally with the members of the W.W. I generation who prosecuted and managed the war from Washington – and that was an understanding that the world is a far more dangerous place than we thought it was and it needs to be watched. This 1946 article is similar to other columns that appeared in 1947 (when the CIA was established) and 1952 (when the NSA opened its doors) in that it announced the creation of a government agency intent on global espionage in order to have done with all future concerns that another Pearl Harbor was in the planning.
The eight Nazi agents, who landed from U-boats on the shores of of Long Island and Florida, planning to cripple American war production, are in jail here [Washington, D.C.] under heavy guard, awaiting military trial on four charges that carry the death penalty.
On the evening of March 26, 1944, fifteen O.S.S. agents were executed following a failed raid on Italian soil to blow-up an Axis railroad tunnel. The sabotage mission was in support of the allied attack taking place further south at Monte Cassino (Battle of Monte Cassino, January 17, 1944 – May 19, 1944) and had the tunnel been successfully blown, supplies to the defending Germans would have been cut off.
This YANK article reported on the first war crime trial of the post World War Two era: the trial of German General Anton Dostler (1891 – 1945), who gave the order to execute the O.S.S. prisoners. In his defense, General Dostler insisted that he was acting under the orders of General Gustav von Zangen, who denied the claim.
In 1940 OSS chief Donovan wrote an article about the German-American Bund, Click here to read it. – from Amazon:
This was more than likely the very first mainstream magazine article to address the vital contributions that the Office of Strategic Service made in beating the Axis powers. It appeared on the newsstands just about six weeks after the end of the Second World War and lists various key operations and triumphs that had heretofore been secret.
In 1940 OSS chief Donovan wrote an article about the German-American Bund, Click here to read it.
A 1939 magazine article that reported on the assorted activities of Japanese spies operating around the Tijuana/San Diego region (their presence was well-documented by the Mexican military in addition to the F.B.I.).
A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation – more about this can be read here.
From the 1940 editorial pages of PM came this column by Henry Paynter (1899 – 1960) who wrote amusingly about the many frustrations facing Japanese spies in North America.
The identity of almost every Japanese spy or saboteur has been known to U.S. authorities. Every instruction they have received or sent has been decoded…
At the height of their irritation, they confided in the German Consul-General stationed in San Francisco – only to learn after the war that he was an FBI informant (you can read about him here).
